REGISTRATION:Opens 13:00 on Tuesday 12th May – Visit www.altnetuk.com for more information. You don’t need to attend all three events but if you can – that is great! Simply let us know which ones you cancan’t attend so we can plan numbers accordingly.

REGISTRATION UPDATE: As you may have noticed, registration is not open 🙁 Don’t worry – instead it opens 13:00 on Friday 15th May (Tomorrow!).

A huge thank you to our hosts, sponsors and supporters who have made this possible. Times are hard but they are still willing to help which is great!! Please go check out what they do and the services they offer.

This weekend was the Alt.Net.UK conference. Personally, I had a great time, met some great people and had some great conversations. However, one thing which surprised me was the level of automation and testing topics. While I proposed a few sessions on testing (as I would), other people raised great discussions around this area. To my surprise, they wasn’t just TDDBDD but focused more on Acceptance Testing and how we can improve the quality of software. This is something I wasn’t expecting and I think its a sign of things to come with developers and testers working as a single unit.

The discussions has definitely got me thinking, and hopefully others who attended. There are clear issues within software development which are causing pain, the question is – how do we solve these problems?

Thank you to everyone who attended, without you the conference wouldn’t have worked, and also our great sponsors. While, I felt it was a successful conference, there is still room for improvements which we will take into account next time.

We have just opened registration for the Alt.Net.UK Summer Conference. To register visit http://altdotnet.org/events/5 . Once the registration is full, you will be able to join the waiting list incase of cancellations.

If you have any problems or questions, please let me know – either leave a comment or email me at Blog {at} Ben Hall . me . uk

The plan is host the event at Conway Hall in London and our thinking is to follow the same sort of schedule as we did in February:– Evening planning session on Friday 12th September, following by a trip to a bar to socialise.– The Open Spaces sessions all day on Saturday 13th September

For more information take a look at my previous announcement and the Alt.Net.UK website. Details regarding hotels and bars will be made available at a later point.

What is the conference format?

The conference will be based on the open spaces format.

Whoever shows up is the right group. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it’s over, it’s over. An Open Space conference’s agenda is decided upon by the conference participants during the opening of the event.

What is Alt.Net?

Various blog posts have defined Alt.Net. Term originally coined by David Laribee on his blog.

We are pleased to announce that the Alt.Net UK Conference will be returning in September, and that there will be room for more attendees this time!

The plan is host the event at Conway Hall in London [1] and our thinking is to follow the same sort of schedule as we did in February:– Evening planning session on Friday 12th September, following by a trip to a bar to socialise.– The Open Spaces sessions all day on Saturday 13th September

This time we are thinking of starting off Saturday with a Park Bench to get the juices flowing.

We are very open to listening to feedback from the community if you think that there are ways that we can improve on the conference experience.

We would especially like to have more testers, technical authors and usability folk attend to foster cross-pollination of ideas.

User registration will start from Friday 11th July at 07:00 UK time [2] so the early birds will get the worm!

The following social hubs have also been set up: Upcoming [3], Facebook [4], FriendFeed [5] and LinkedIn. Don’t forget that you can subscribe to the AltNetUk News River [6].

Finally, we are currently looking for sponsorship, so if you know of an organisation that would be interested to be associated with the conference in return for a little lucre, we would love to hear from you / them! (The conference is non-profit)

Conchango and RedGate have generously agreed to be launch sponsors – but more is needed, especially as we have to pay for Conway Hall this time.

SerialSeb, one of the attendees at Alt.Net.UK conference earlier in the year, is arranging a few drinks in a London bar (to be announced via upcoming link) as a chance to catch up, meet and have an informal chat (no sessions or anything like that) with people who are interested in the alt.net ideas. Should be a great way to unwind after a hard days work.